Behind the scenes of Celebrity Chef with Alessandro Borghese, between crickets and egos to keep at bay

Enter the restaurant Alessandro Borghese during the filming of Alessandro Borghese Celebrity Chef it means setting foot on a set where you can't hear a fly and where only one voice resonates: that of the host who in the program plays the role of both host and judge but who behind the scenes also enjoys playing the role of Extremely meticulous director and be careful so that everything happens in the right way. We are in February, Milan is invaded by rain, the news of the Ferragnez crisis has spread a few hours ago – «I organized two or three caterings for them, seeing as they don't live far from here”, says Borghese -, and Alessandro is there to announce the winner between the two celebrities protagonists of the episode: the former tennis player Roberta Vinci and the Sky Sports journalist Stefano Meloccaro. Silence reigns in the restaurant, a sort of immaterial tension in which, at the end of the games, Borghese awards the star of Celebrity Chefs to the winner (who we won't tell you) and then, once the camera is turned off, he asks for it to be returned to him because “the star is on loan for use, we need it for tomorrow too”. Alessandro is in great shape: he is at home, and it shows. He always has a joke ready, he willingly agrees to be photographed together with the two competitors and then puts that shot on Instagram when the episode airs on TV8 and, when he notices that the journalists have arrived, he asks the diners sitting in the room – girls dressed in evening dresses around two in the afternoon – to say hello to them.

While an employee collects the white stars and black stars that the judges used to vote for their favorite team inside a plastic case that is transported with such care that it seems like a holy relic, a make-up artist runs to Borghese to dab his forehead doing some acrobatics, considering that Alessandro is much taller than he appears on television. After changing and freshening up, here he joins the two judges of this edition of Alessandro Borghese Celebrity Chef – i.e. the new entry Marisa Lauritoalready the protagonist of Those good girlsand the very confirmed Riccardo Monco, three-starred chef of Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence – and start the chat. We are here because the programme, produced by Banijay Italia and which has become a must on the eighth channel's schedule, returns for the first time ever on Tv8 from 25 March, from Monday to Friday, at 7.10pm. The mechanism is always the same: two celebrities borrow Borghese's cuisine to create their own tasting menu which will be judged both by Laurito and Monco and by the diners. The novelty of this edition is that Alessandro Borghese has the right to vote for the first time, while the voting mechanism is quite simple: each judge has at his disposal 6 stars, 3 black and 3 white, to reward each celebrity on a scale from 0 to 3. The diners in the dining room vote, however, by majority: the celebrity who cooked best gets a star. Whoever receives the most stars at the end of the dinner wins the coveted title of Celebrity Chef of the evening.

Alessandro Borghese, Riccardo Monco and Marisa Lauritojule hering

«This is the playful part of my morning, then I go to work seriously», jokes Borghese before spending some beautiful words on the new entry of this edition, namely Marisa Laurito. «It was my wish to have Marisa on board: I asked for her and I did it. She is a great professional from whom I learn so much every day. She knows food in a visceral way, she is ironic and fun”, comments the chef, adding that all the celebrities who participate in the program “become children again”, ready as they are to have fun and get dirty to conquer the judges' palates. «The competitors present themselves here as great chefs but then maybe they give us rubbish», jokes Laurito who admits that during the recordings he tasted some very good but also very forgettable dishes. «Eating is a good thing, I hate eating badly», Laurito continues before Alessandro reviews the most common mistakes he sees made within the program. «They often don't taste and, above all, they do the baking wrong, with the result that the dish is either stringy, overcooked or burnt. You always have to be careful about the times.” Even Monco, however, agrees that to be in the kitchen you need to have great humility, this experience being “a perennial university” in which it is always possible to learn something. Alessandro Borghese is also convinced of this, as he continues to have an almost childish curiosity towards the gastronomic world. In fact, for some time now he has decided to invest in crickets because “I find it a protein that in the future will help us replace other proteins”, but also to reiterate a concept that the judges Celebrity Chefs they fully agree: «when you participate in the program, never think of overly sophisticated cuisine but always remember to be at the service of the customer and not of your own ego». And never was a lesson more shareable.